The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1887-02-24
81 INDUSTRIAL TOPICS.
The Influence Bee Literature
Has Exerted in Causing
People to Become
Apiarians.
How the Garden May Be Made to Add to
the Enjoyment of the Family.
\ Nery sweet subject.

tew years have caused many farmers to
s-onsIder The propriety of engaging in
Bookkeeping. Many have been led to
believe that they could supply their own
Gables with sweets by keeping bees and
thus save the money they have been ac-
snstomcd 10 spend for sugar and sirup.
Other. have thought that there would
BE profit in raising honey to sell to
1heir ucighborS or to send to city mar
kcis Still others have been induced
70 believe that they could make money
Sn raising and selling colonies and
queens 1t is by no means strange
fttat many persons have been tempted
10 engage in bee culture. All the poets
from Virgil to Wordsworth have sung
2ibe praises of the industrious little in
ssects that gathers and stores up honey.
Even the writers of hymns and nursery
songs have ia words as sweet as honey
itself praised the bee and the substance
a gathers from the flowers. The bible
Is full of pleasant paragraphs relating
20 the bee. and in il the promised land
Is represented ~ FLOWING with milk
and honey Other books regarded as
sacred by those who peruse them show
chat the benelicicnce of deity is illus
Ersted by the workings of the honey
bee
Prose writers are likely to become
0oetical when they compose articles on
bees and honey There is more litera-
lure pertaining to bees than all other
insects combined. 1t is easy to collect
n large library on bees. 1t would en-
Brace many volumes of poetry. @sthet-
": prose sermons, proverbs, semitic
t.ueatiscs. and economic essays, or
books Of instruction. There are more
periodicals devoted to bee culture than
80 every department OF stock-raising,
and the cultivation of most of them is
large Persons engaged in no other
department OF husbandry are AS willing
TO write for The papers as those inter-
sssted in the production of honey. IL
appears as easy for an apiarian to
write Us for politician to talk in public.
They can talk. too. and they generally
employ "houeycd words" A convention
of bce-keepers never resembles Qua
2Ser meeting. Nearly all the members
are moved TO make remarks. They are
as restless rs bees on bright day in June
srhen the air is redolent with perfume
and the branches of trees and shrubs,
.1s well as the surface of the earth, are
covered with flowers. People who think
zhe world is growing dull and stupid
should attend a convention of bee keep
-ers. They will find lively set there.
,.tn think sthafncn lyac
--drones" in the midst of a swarm of
workers.
There are good and bad years for
snake stories, ghost stories, and big
pumpk n stories. but every year is ia
vorable for marvellous honey stories. A
season never passes in which an account
is not given of some person, often a
hrokeu-down clergyman or poor widow
left with large family on her hands,
who made small fortune by selling
money, colonies of bees. or queens of
foreign lineage aud very long pedigrees.
As the stories pass from one country
paper to another they increase in size
and sweetness, like the treasures gath
cred by bees when linden trees, syringia
shrubs, and white clover plants are in
blossom. Every rural editor approves
these stories aud is happy in informing
Che readers of his journal that there is
something sweet aud pleasant in this
sour and unhappy world and time. 1t
matters not TO him that the stories he
puts in type or finds in his "patent in
side are no better located than the
residences OF persons who recommend
patent nostrums for the cure of con-
sumption yellow fever. and the Asatic
cholera He wants some pleasant read
ing for his paper as an offset for long
list of railway accidents, fires, floods,
sdroughts, crimes, shipwrecks. suicides.
miscellaneous casualties, and business
FAILURES, and he captures bee story rs
a skilled apiarian does swarm of wild
bees or the honey they have stored in
hollow tree.
Persons who become interested in the
xaoney stories they find in the newspa-
rpers are likely to desire more extended
reading on the subject and the adver-
sisement OF book with the very pleas
ing title OF The Blessed Bees. catch
rs their eye. They send for the volume
and find il dripping with sweetness
from the titlc-page to the closing para
graph. To read the book is to buy
s.olony of bees. new-fangled hive.
with movable frames. an imported
queen. and the various appliances found
-rbere the stand bought for the purpose
of making a start in the honey business
was purchased II is soon ascertained
rhat the book entitled The Blessed
Bees" though ',just too sweet for any
fhiue." does not give all the informa-
ufisn needed 10 the novice in apiarian